After
by orbythesea
Summary: The problem, she decides, is that she's never thought about her life as something that happened after Will. Set in season 4 and the beginning of 5. Sequel to "Something."


Alicia measures her life in _befores_ and _afters_, moments of time that she can keep stored on a shelf, sealed into neat boxes that she can pull down to examine after her children are asleep. She files her memories away, organizes them by people and events, places and things.

The problem, she decides, is that she's never thought about anything in her life her life as something that happened _after_ Will, and so she can't fit him, them, whatever they had or have or were— She can't fit it into a neat box the way she can the rest of her life, can't catalogue it the way she can catalogue her kids and her husband and Owen.

When she tries to think back of her life before Owen, though, there isn't much to remember. She thinks there might have been nursery school and a little blonde girl with bows and pigtails. Claire, maybe, or Cora, but those memories feel faded and unimportant, as if those years of her life came before her _life_, as if they happened to someone else.

Life after her parents brought Owen home, though, those memories feel like they are hers, vivid and bright and sometimes they are so powerful they overwhelm her. He is fond of saying that she was born grownup, that she was never really a kid. He's not wrong, but he's not right, either, and she thinks she grew up the day she became a big sister, became _herself_ the day he was born and there was suddenly someone in the house who needed things that she could actually provide. She sang him lullabies and read him stories and taught him to count to ten before he was two.

He was three when their mother took off for the first time, and somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind, there is a box that holds all the stories she made up to keep him distracted, to keep him safe, to make sure he believed it when their father said that Mommy was coming back. _Once upon a time, there was a girl called Alicia_, the stories always began. _There was a girl called Alicia and her brother Owen the Mighty_. She's not sure she ever believed the stories herself, but a week after she stormed out, their mother walked back in the door and Alicia remembers turning up the volume on her Fischer Price record player so that Owen wouldn't hear their parents screaming at each other down stairs, wouldn't know that there was anything wrong.

"It's okay," Owen told her when the volume proved insufficient to muffle the shouting. "If Mommy goes away again, then you can be my mommy."

"I'll never go away," she whispered, holding him close. "Do you want to hear a bedtime story?"

She did go away, though, and a part of her will never forgive herself for that. A part of her thinks that if she'd stayed home for college that maybe he would have handled high school better, maybe he could have let the taunts and the teasing and the whispered _queers_ and _pussys_ and _faggots_ roll of his back. Maybe if she had been there, someone would have insisted that their mother lock up the liquor cabinet instead of flinging its doors open wide, maybe he could have just said _no_ to that first cigarette, first joint, first whatever else he got into.

"Would it be better if I came home?" she asked him during Christmas break of her junior year. "I can transfer somewhere closer, if that would— "

"Stop it," he said, waving her off. "I'm _fine_."

"You're not _fine_, Owen," she said. "I have eyes, you know."

"Yeah," he muttered. "I know. And if you come back I'll just disappoint you, so just shut up about it and go back to New York already."

"Okay," she mumbled, stung. "I'm gonna, um— "

"Alicia, stop," he said, reaching for her. "I didn't mean— "

She didn't let herself cry until she was back in her tiny shoebox of a dorm room, pillow pressed against her face to muffle the sound and catch her tears.

That night, after she dried her tears and let her roommates drag her out to some new bar downtown she met Eric and decided, actively _decided_ that her life was going to be something different, that taking care of Owen was something that she did _before_ and not something she did anymore.

Life became what happened after she met Eric, after they started dating seriously, started sleeping together, started practically living together. It was her first serious relationship, her first post-high school boyfriend, so looking back, Alicia thinks that it was probably doomed from the start. It never really worked, and she could never figure out why, but back then she was too young to know what to do about it. Too young and desperate for approval, too afraid of speaking up or letting him see what lay beneath the surface lest he leave before she was ready to let go.

It never quite worked, but she _liked_ Eric, couldn't quite bring herself to let go, even when she knew it was never going anywhere, was never going to last. Even he got into Wharton and she decided to take a scholarship from Georgetown over debt at Penn, even after they packed the apartment into a truck and left New York, even after they'd unloaded his things in Philly and made the rest of the trip down to DC to unload her belongings, even when she couldn't bring herself to be excited about law school because his presence felt oppressive and irritating and _wrong_– Even then, she couldn't really _end_ it.

"I think we should pause this," she told him, after they'd returned the moving truck and were eating Chinese takeout, leaning back against her kitchen counter.

"You're breaking up with me?" he asked her. "Now?"

"No!" She swallowed, hard. "I mean… I don't want you to feel beholden or bound. I just— If you want to see other people while you're in Philadelphia, that's okay with me," is what she said and years later, she's still not entirely sure why she didn't say _yes_, why she didn't really end it then and there.

"This isn't working for me anymore," is what she said when she finally did end it for good.

"It's because of him, isn't it?" Eric had asked. "That guy you study with. Will. You know, before you met him— "

"Yes." She had cut him off as quickly as she could. "No. It doesn't matter. It's a separate issue."

The thing is, though, it was never separate, not really. Will was mixed into her veins by that point, and she knew him like the back of her hand. She thinks sometimes that she still does, then she remembers that she's doesn't really know the back of her hand that well at all.

She thinks of Will as being the start of the chapter in her life that happened after undergrad, after Eric, after Owen was arrested and she started law school because someone in the family needed to have the skill set needed to help him if he got into trouble again.

Even now, years later, when she thinks about law school, the first thing she thinks about is the way they were inseparable that first semester. She thinks about law school, thinks about _law_, and she thinks about the way he made it okay for her to be a kid, for a little while. She wasn't a kid, not really, but with Will she felt like it was okay to pretend, okay to drink too much or stay up too late giggling over stupid movies when they were too tired to focus but too wired to sleep. Will made it okay to get into popcorn fights, okay to eat breakfast for dinner, okay to admit that sometimes she didn't feel nearly as sure as she always pretended that she was.

Those are the moments she remembers first, even before the hours spent pouring over casebooks and outlines and notebooks, the late nights mumbling to each other about the finer points of claim preclusion or contract remedies.

She tries not to think about the second semester of 1L all that much, tries to pretend that whatever it was, it wasn't anything worth thinking about at all.

Objectively, she knows it happened, knows that whatever it was – is – _was_ – between them, it probably meant more than she was willing to admit at the time, more than she will ever admit. The thing is, Alicia has spent a lifetime honing her ability to pretend, and she has become so skilled at spinning half-truths that she can sometimes convince herself that the line between truth and fiction exists exactly where she's drawn it. Sometimes. That line shifts, though, is always shifting, and when she closes her eyes she drifts over it, stumbles and falls into the fragmented pieces of memory that she would make herself forget, if they weren't so precious.

The thing is, the thing that she will never, never tell anyone, is that she never meant to let him go. She never meant _pause this_ to mean _end this_, never meant to fall in love with someone else. They did end it, though, whatever it was. They ended it twice, but even now it's still not really over. She stopped sleeping with Will before she fell in love with Peter, but she didn't fall in love with Peter _after_ Will, and that's the problem, really. She let Peter in when she was trying to shut Will out, trying to excise him from her veins but it never really worked.

Even after she met Peter, a single look from Will could leave her wanting, leave her aching, and she spent the rest of law school trying to convince herself that it wasn't true, trying to pretend that it didn't matter that she missed him because he had Carla Templeton and Chrissie Paige and when 2L started, he went home with a different girl every night. They never talked about it, but sometimes she wonders if she let Peter put a ring on her finger because of that one time when she came back from Chicago a day early and walked into her apartment to find Will standing in her kitchen in boxers and a t-shirt.

"I'm sorry," Janice had said to her bedroom door after he made a hasty exit. "We weren't– It wasn't about me. I borrowed some of your perfume – the stuff your mom sent you from France? You left it out and I was supposed– I had a date with that med student I told you about, but he stood me up and Will was there and he kept telling me that I smelled like you and we got really drunk and it wasn't– Jesus, Alicia, he wouldn't even _look_ at me."

Somewhere along the line, though, sometime between Chrissie Paige and seeing Zach's tiny fist on that first ultrasound, she fell in love with Peter. That much she knows is true. Still, she thinks of her life with Peter as a long series of _afters_. After they got married, after Zach was born, after she stopped working, after Grace was born, after they moved out of the city, after Peter stopped coming home for dinner, after— After Peter broke her heart. After Peter was arrested. After Peter's appeal. After Peter lied about Kalinda. After— Peter's still there, after everything, and she still loves him.

She still loves him, so maybe it doesn't matter that she started measuring her life in terms of what happened after Peter in a way that she has never managed to do with Will. It would be easier, she thinks, if that didn't matter. Easier to believe that whatever it was in law school, whatever it was last year— she tells herself that it was nothing, and it leaves her feeling empty and incomplete, but it's still better than the alternative.

It is easier to call it nothing than to acknowledge that he probably broke her heart at twenty-three, then again at forty-three but even that isn't really true. No, if she's being honest, she thinks that maybe the reason Peter is a series of _afters_ and Will is constantly in the present is that she made the conscious choice to break her own heart because hearts were not made to be trusted. It is easier, then, to pretend that there was nothing between them because if it was nothing, then she never hurt him, was never hurt.

If it's nothing, then it was only ever Peter who broke her and only Peter bears the blame for the way she never really let him fit into her apartment, into her life, into her bed again. Even now as they are mending fences or trying to make it work or maybe just using each other for sex— whatever she and Peter are doing now, she still doesn't really carve out a place where he fits, doesn't know if she even wants to.

So she tells herself that whatever it was with Will was nothing because maybe then she won't have to think about the way the past and the present run together without any defined boundary, without the safety of _before_ and the _after_. She calls it nothing so she doesn't have to acknowledge the way she keeps her hands clasped tight together when he sits down next to her after examining a witness because what she wants to do, what she doesn't trust herself not to do, is let a hand come to rest on his thigh, to lean over and tell him how _good_ he is, how much she misses him. If it was nothing, then it is something she can file away as a memory, boxed up tight and fully in control.

Alicia is many things, but she is in _control_, is always in control.

It's a skill she learned early, couching her words, smiling and deflecting, keeping the peace. She got good at being good so that everyone else was allowed to be bad and she thought it was enough, up until it wasn't. It was supposed to be enough. It was supposed to be enough to keep her mother from leaving for good, supposed to be enough to keep the pain and fatigue off her father's face, supposed to be enough to keep Owen from crying when Dennis Payton called him a faggot.

(It was supposed to be enough to keep her husband from straying, to keep her children from seeing their mother cry, to keep her _family_– It was supposed to be enough.)

Alicia doesn't know why it wasn't enough, doesn't know where she failed, doesn't know why everything she touches falls apart.

What she does know is this: right now, she is not in control.

She's not in control and she's shouting but it feels _good_, as if all those years spent learning to smile meant nothing. He's angry, but she won't absorb it, can't absorb it, is too far gone to try. She can't pick up his baggage and suddenly the weight she's been carrying around for decades slips off her shoulders and there is no more guilt, no more shame, no more never, never being enough for anyone—

She dares him to fire her, to get rid of her, to leave her, to finally, finally become an _after_— She screams at him, lets go of all semblance of control, of pretending that it was nothing, that it didn't matter. She takes every tiny, ugly, unseemly piece of herself, all the bits that she has relegated to dusty boxes on the shelf, the pieces that she tries to push through the cracks of _before_ and _after_ so that she can let herself believe that they don't exist at all– She takes them all out and hurls them at him with everything that she has and it's all wrapped up in a sentence, in just a couple of words but she cannot pretend that her pain is less than his, cannot pretend that she isn't hurting, isn't broken.

She expects him to run, horrified by the wreckage of her life. She almost wants him to, wants to finally be released, to finally get to an _after_ but he when he runs, he runs _towards_ her, hands at her hair, at her back, at her ass, and he pulls her into him. In that moment, she wants him – all of him – more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

"Dammit," she mutters, and in the end, she is the one who runs.

The thing is, though, once she loses control, she can't pretend that it didn't happen. They are adults and responsible and can admit their own weaknesses but she thinks that maybe unloading on him opened up space for him to sneak into her skin, to occupy that space between muscle and bone and she can't get him out.

"We should avoid being alone together," he says, and it hurts, the way he thinks he can just _decide_ but she's grateful for it, grateful because, even now, he finds a way to save her.

"I'm sorry, Will," she says, but those aren't the words she meant to say, aren't the words she _wants_ to say. They are true, though, and when he asks for clarification, the list of things she wants to say is so long that she just shakes her head and forces a laugh. "Oh, I don't know," she says because she cannot – she will not – she _cannot_ let herself give voice to the thoughts in her head. She cannot tell him that she's sorry she walked out of her office last night, out of his office last year. She can't tell him that she's sorry for walking out of his life, all those years ago, sorry that in the weeks after Zach was born his calls went unreturned until she didn't know what to say anymore. She can't tell him that she's sorry for all the things she never told him, will never tell him, _can_ never tell him. "What am I not sorry about?"

When Laura asks about it, she lies. "Once," she says. "A long time ago."

Even as she _decides_, as she insists that it was just once, something that happened when they were kids and too young to know any better, even as she tells herself that it was nothing, that it can be nothing again, that it can fade into the background and the rest of her life can become what happens after she lost control, after that last kiss, after—

More than anything, she needs to make her life what happens after Will but she can't fit it – whatever it is – she can't fit it into a box and put it neatly on the shelf. The effort of trying distracts her, and she loses track of cause and effect, loses the ability to separate out what _was_ from what _is_. The more she tries to define her present as happening _after Will_, the more she dreams about him, thinks about him, and she can't stop. She can't stop the way his cologne permeates every room he walks into, the way her skin tingles when he stands too close.

She wonders if the problem isn't that she can't fit _Will_ and _after_ together but, instead, that he knew her too well _before_. Before she was Alicia Florrick, before she put on a mask for the press and her children and the world, before— He slides between all of her _befores_ and _afters_ and sees the mask for exactly what it is but she doesn't know if he lives in that place under her skin because he sees what she keeps hidden or if he can see it all now because she doesn't know how to forget what her life was before she started running from him.

She is running, though, has been running for as long as she can remember. They are diligent in their efforts to avoid each other, and she might think it was ridiculous, except that every time they're alone together, it comes up. It's as if whatever they were forces its way to the surface and won't let them become whatever it is they are supposed to _be_.

He keeps trying to reassure her, trying to tell her that it won't happen again, that the thing between them isn't one that he's going to act on but the problem is, it's not Will that she doesn't trust.

Two nights before the election, she dreams about him. No. She dreams about him most nights, but most nights it's all skin and lips and _God_ she misses the way he used to touch her. There is – was – such reverence in his touch, as if she was – is – precious and rare, young and beautiful and unguarded. It's that reverence she remembers when she's awake, too, the way he would watch her, study her, the way his hand shook as he tugged her zipper down that first night together as grownups. Two nights before the election, though, it's not sex that she dreams about, not romance. In her dream she is as young as he makes her feel, as young as she was when they were still in school, but her belly is swollen and distended, skin stretched tight under his fingers.

_"Gail?" he suggests._

_"Gail Gardner?" She makes a face at the alliteration and he laughs._

_"No worse than Grace Gardner," he shoots back. _

_"I never chose Grace," she says. "Or Zachary."_

_"What would you choose?" he asks. "If you could do it all over again."_

She wakes up disoriented, curled up into a ball with her pillow held close against her chest. The clock ticks over from 11:59 to midnight, and it's late, but not too late. She picks up her phone and scrolls through her contacts until she finds his name. _No,_ she tells herself, even as she dials.

"What's up?" he asks through the phone line, and she closes her eyes.

"Nothing," she says, quickly. "I— Did I wake you?"

He chuckles. "No rest for the wicked," he says. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, I was just— I actually dialed the wrong— " This was a mistake.

"Oh," he says. "I'll, uh, I'll let you go, then." He doesn't hang up, though, and neither does she.

She pads into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine, listening to the sound of his breathing on the other end of the line, unsure if she's hoping for or against the silence following a tapped end call button. "I didn't dial the wrong number," she says, finally.

"I didn't really think that you did," he admits. "What's going on, Alicia?"

"I— " she hesitates. "I shouldn't have called." Peter's ring feels heavy on her hand. "If it had been us, at Georgetown, if it— Do you ever think about what that would have been— ?"

Will's quiet for a long time, and she's about to ask if he's still there, about to apologize for calling, when he finally answers. "Charlotte," he says, finally. "I always pictured us with a little girl. Charlotte. Maybe Charlie, for short. I thought we'd have a firm of our own and— " He sighs. "What's this about, Alicia?"

"I shouldn't have called," she whispers, again. "I'm sorry, I just— "

"Do you want to come over?" he asks, and the hope in his voice is enough to make her think – to make her _know_ – that whatever it is with them, it's not _nothing_ and it's not _over_. It's not something that will ever be _over_. "You sound— "

"No," she says, quickly. "No, my kids— I just… Charlie Gardner. I like that."

"Cavanaugh-Gardner," he corrects. "I would never have asked you to change your name."

"It never occurred to me not to," she admits.

"I always liked Cavanaugh. It suits you. It sounds… It sounds like music."

"I should go," she says, and she can hear Will sigh through the phone line. "I have to."

She hangs up before Will can respond and drains what's left in her glass. It was a mistake, calling him, and she knows it but somehow she can't bring herself to regret it.

Zach's bedroom door is ajar and she nudges it open a bit wider, smiles at him as he sleeps.

After he was born, everything changed. _She_ changed, and the hesitation and trepidation she felt during her pregnancy faded into the background, filed away in a neat little box that she never mentioned again, as if admitting to her own uncertainties was the first step towards becoming her own mother.

"_You_ were the one who wanted them," she remembers her mom drunkenly screaming at her father in the middle of the night. "_You_ deal with them."

She remembers that moment with Peter, after he showed up after her last exam to surprise her. "I'm pregnant," she whispered, voice breaking. "I'm sorry, I— "

"I love you," Peter said, quick and vehement, eyes full of so much feeling that it almost hurt to look at him. "This is— Oh, God, Alicia, this is– " he laughed, held her close and just kept _smiling_ and she never got to ask what he wanted to do about it, never got to tell him about the appointment with Planned Parenthood or the way her father got quiet on the phone when she said the word _abortion._

"Do you love him?" her father had asked.

"Yes," she had said, quickly and without hesitation. "But Daddy, that's not— "

"Then talk to him," her father said. "Tell him how you feel about it."

Now, watching Zach, she can't imagine her life without him, doesn't _want_ to imagine her life without him. "I chose you," she whispers into the dark, makes it as simple as black and white. "I chose you, and I would choose you all over again."

She chose Zach and Grace and, once, she chose Peter but now that choice feels like an extension of her children, an afterthought, almost, or a conscious decision, designed to undo some of the damage the past few years have inflicted on them. She loves him, even after everything, and she believes him when he tells her how much he loves her, how much he _respects_ her so there's no reason _not_ to choose her family over whatever unresolved thing there was or is with Will.

There is no reason to keep going back to draw water from that well, no reason that her insides feel tied up in knots when he walks into the room, no reason that she can't stop herself from flirting, from smiling when he walks into a room. There's no _reason_ that he might just be the only person left on the planet who can make her laugh without even trying.

There is no reason to ask about Laura.

She does, though, and even as she says the words, she knows that it's wrong. Owen told her once that she was a good person, that she couldn't cheat, but she is back with Peter and even if she's not acting on it, just breathing the same air as him _feels_ like cheating.

When she tries to explain it again, tries to explain away that phone call, tries to forget about the idea of her and Will and a little girl called Charlie— "It'll just be like last time," she says, even though neither of them know what last time even was. "I can't figure my way out of this one," she admits. She can't figure her way out of it, can't figure out how to let the past be the _past_, can't figure out how to stop wanting him, how to live her life _after_ Will. She tells herself _no_, tells herself _no_ even as she leans in to kiss him, even as his lips find hers and she doesn't want to stop, doesn't ever want to stop.

She doesn't want to think about what happens after he stops kissing her, after they get out of the car and have to face the consequences of a lifetime of weak moments, of the fact that even though the smart thing for her to do has always been to walk away she _can't_ anymore— "Oh, God," she whispers, and it's like coming home again, breathing him in. "What do we do?" For a brief moment, she thinks that she might agree to anything he says, to anywhere he wants to run.

Then the spell is broken and she has a second to regret it, to hate herself, to _know better._

"When this night is over, we talk," he says, and she tries to tell him no but he insists. "To hell with the bad timing. We talk."

She can't remember ever being so terrified, can't remember ever feeling so out of control. Not standing there in her office screaming at him, not in any of the nights trying to sooth Zach's colic away—

Later, after the case is over, after she's gotten a few hours of sleep, after she's taken a shower and changed her clothes, after she smiles and shakes hands, says _thank you_ so many times that the words have lost all meaning she retreats into the suite's bedroom, steals a few moments for herself, after the room erupts and the television displays numbers that make last night's court battle meaningless– She sees him. Thinks she sees him. _Believes_ that she sees him, and in that moment, she wants to be anywhere but where she is. She wants to talk, to hear his voice, to feel his hand at the small of her back, his arms wrapped around her.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl called Alicia Cavanaugh and even after she got everything that she was supposed to want it didn't make her happy so she ran far, far away— _

Life isn't a fairytale, though, has never been a fairytale, and none of the stories she told Owen ever came true because there's no such thing as happily-ever-after when _after_ never comes. She shakes her head, remembers standing in Zach's doorway two nights ago. _I chose you,_ she had whispered. _I chose this life, chose _my _life_, and after so many years it's too late to go back, too late to pretend that the stories can change after the choices have been made.

Peter finds her and she puts on a smile, reminds herself to by happy but all she can remember is the fear, talking with Eli all those months ago about the hotel receipt that wasn't. She was terrified– _is_ terrified– not of scandal or consequences but of the humiliation, of her children losing another hero and it's _too late_ to make a different choice because there are consequences and ripples and she can still feel Owen's tiny body shaking as she rocked his tears away, still sees Grace's tears when she told her own children about the separation and she wants– she _needs_— to find her way to _after Will_.

She slips into the bathroom to call him, to tell him, to try to break it off– whatever _it_ even is— to tell him that it's over again but they've called it over so many times that she doesn't know if it will make a difference. Doesn't really think there's anything she can do to extricate herself and she just wants _out_, wants to get _away_ and then she sees Cary's name on her list of recent calls and it's like a door has been flung wide open, like there's light at the end of the tunnel and she knows where she needs to run.

"I'm in," she tells Cary, and it's the only way she can see out of all of it, the only way to preserve a lifetime of choices, and as he steps inside of her apartment, it's the beginning of a new chapter, the beginning her life life after Lockhart/Gardner.

"Everything is ending," she tells him, and of course, of course, of _course_ that's when Will calls. She doesn't answer. Everything is ending, and it's good. It needs to end, it has to end.

When it finally does, it doesn't go the way she planned it. Everything falls apart and she can't help but think that it's her fault for holding on too long, that it's her fault for delaying the _after_.

He calls her awful and she fights back but the truth is, she doesn't disagree. She thinks he might have told her that she wasn't capable of being awful, once.

"This was never meant personally," she says, and it's awful and cliché and probably a lie but even if it was about him, even if all of the solid business reasons she's repeated to herself for three weeks now are false— it was never about _hurting_ him.

"I don't give a damn," he mutters.

For one brief moment after the doors close, she honestly believes that those are the last words he will ever speak to her. They won't be, and she knows it, but the thought is enough to push the tears she has been holding back to the surface and it takes everything she has not to break down. She feels like she did after seeing Peter's name on the news crawl that day at the cleaners, like she did after hearing the name _Leela_ from Andrew Wiley's lips. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself back together, remembers that five years of hurt and humiliation have made her hard.

"I need your phone," she tells Carey Zepps. "After Will– "

Carey hands his phone over before she can explain that hers is missing, and she smiles. The words fit nicely in her mouth and for the first time in twenty years, she feels like she can let go.


End file.
